Electronic mail, or email, is a powerful communication tool that allows information to be exchanged nearly instantaneously. However, the ease of sending email can result in a recipient receiving vast amounts of email to his or her inbox as illustrated in FIG. 1. In addition to email sent by actual people, a recipient may receive hundreds of email generated by machines from third party services such as airlines, invitation generating companies, courier services, and social media sites. These emails may include confirmations, notifications, promotions, social media updates, and messages from collaboration systems. There should be an easy way for a recipient to understand the contents of email and expected responses, if any, in order to efficiently process the email the recipient receives.
Some of the email within a recipient's inbox may require or induce action from the recipient. Other email may provide the recipient with a status such as an email containing information about a package shipment. Email should be extensible and annotated in such a way that a recipient can clearly understand the content of the email and easily interact with the email in order to process the email's contents. Furthermore, a recipient should be allowed to interact with email annotations in an email system directly, without having to open email or being directed to a third party site to provide a response. For example, there may be annotations associated with email in order to check in for a flight. The recipient of such an email should be able to interact with an annotation that allows a recipient to check in for the flight without having to visit the airline's website or even opening the flight check-in email. Other examples may include RSVPing for an event, saving an offer, rating a movie, tracking a package, approving an expense report, or accepting a friend request. Annotations should be clear and provide a way in which a recipient can easily interact and process email.